Victor Valley's mail service began on a catch-as-you-can basis 142 years ago. Earlier
postal service required going eighty dusty miles on dangerous dirt trails fraught with
outlaws to the nearest Post Office in Los Angeles. All of Southern California suffered
extremely poor postal delivery, with the usual time in 1850 for outside mail issuance
being from seven to eight months.
Mormons moving into San Bernardino a year later greatly increased the need to upgrade
communications between their new colony and church headquarters 630 miles away. Jefferson
Hunt, a Mormon leader and his son-in-law, Sheldon Stoddard, both famous in Victor Valley's
history, soon began freighting private mail similar to today's Federal Express, between
San Bernardino and Salt Lake. Official U.S. mail then reached Southern California from
Utah via San Francisco, where warring Indians and deep Nevada snow oft times caused
lengthy delays. Horsemen James Wilson, Ed Hope, Dan Hunt and others, including Sheldon
Stoddard, who alone made twenty-four round trips carrying mail pouches, would accept
letters en route at stations along the way. Victor Valley's relay depot, where fresh
horses were kept, was near today's Bob Williams' place on Turner Ranch Road.
A large granite monument placed by the Mohave Historical Society in 1988 celebrates a
Pony Express having once been there. Sometimes called "Jackson Express", private
efforts to move California mail proved semi-satisfactory at first. The Post Office
Department didn't deliver rural mail but contracted such to the lowest bidder. In 1854,
Major George Chorpenning, active in mail biddings, was awarded $12,500 yearly to service
Utah and Southern California via the Mormon Road to Victor Valley, Cajon Pass, San
Bernardino to San Diego.
Calling for twenty eight day point-to-point mail, beginning on July 1, 1854 and running
for four years, Chorpenning used horse or pack animals, depending on the load. Often, he
and Boliver Roberts, who later won frame on another Pony Express venture, teamed together
to rush Salt Lake mail to Los Angeles in twenty days. In 1855, California appropriated
$20,000 for roadwork from San Pedro, up the Cajon Pass and across the Mojave Desert to the
state line at a place nearest Salt Lake City. This same year Congress gave $50,000 a vast
sum then, for a Los Angeles-Salt Lake highway. Riders once a month started from each
settlement planning to meet near the Muddy River, north of Las Vegas. Pony (horse) Express
trips, minus pack mules, took between 20 to 28 days. The late Fred Hoiladay, while
President of the San Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society, told of two riders making
the run in 16-urged, according to Hoiladay, "by hostile Indians who chased them most
of the way". One Express pack team was set upon by Indians five days out from San
Bernardino, near Baker. In another fray, a war party of fifteen Indians showered the
couriers with arrows. Strong "gun play" by several riders saved themselves and
the mail.
The biography of Ephriam H. Roberts (1839-1911) and several 1911 newspaper articles
told where his being Boliver Robert's cousin led to employment on "The Pony Express
Mail Line" from Salt Lake to San Bernardino in 1857. Ephriam was also grand uncle to
Victor Valley's master sculptor, Earl W. Bascom. This early mailman lived through Indian
skermishes, ambushes and burned down stations with caretakers murdered in his year-long
Pony Express stint.
During 1857, three thousand California Mormons were recalled to Utah by the church.
This mass exodus greatly depleted the area's population, causing the mail line to become
non-profitable. The following year, with the contract expired, the riders drifted off
elsewhere.
Shortly after the shut down of the "San Bernardino-Salt Lake Pony Express",
named such in "Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853-1913", by M. Newmark's
1930 book and other turn of the century printings, Bolivar Roberts became Superintendent
of the western division of another, more famous, Pony Express. It was Roberts, stationed
in Carson City, Nevada, who hired sixty daring, skinny, but wiry lads not over eighteen,
and mostly orphans, to ride the Central Overland Pony Express route for S25.00 weekly. The
trials and tribulations braved by the 1854-58 Express riders was of immense value to this
new hand-picked bunch. They were able to begin moving the mail within two months after the
Saint Jo, Missouri to Sacramento system began.
Little remains locally honoring those dedicated riders, who long ago crossed Victor
Valley, bringing the first regular postal service to the region. All fame and glory has
since gone to other brave Pony Express riders, who blazed different trails at a later
date. Once highly touted heroes, these stout-hearted men of the past are now merely
"ghost riders" in modern California and Utah skies.
